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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Applications > DiskWarrior experts: How long do you wait before you give up?

DiskWarrior experts: How long do you wait before you give up?
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kennedy
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Jun 21, 2004, 04:56 PM
 
QUESTION: What's the longest time that DW has sat with no progress feedback but actually end up making progress?

or

QUESTION: How long do you wait before you give up that DW will ever make progress?


Background: My OSX partition is failing in fsck and won't boot properly. In trying to rebuild the directory via DW, it moves briskly to Step 5 (Locating directory data...) and then seemingly stalls. I let it "think" for an hour then hit "Cancel" expecting it to be non-responsive (that DW was locked up). But actually it did cancel. I sure wish DW would give some sort of progress indicator if its still actually working. So, now I've restarted DW working on it and its been an hour again... how long should I let it sit before I give up and try something else? 3 hours? Overnight? 3 days?


Thanks, Brian
     
gorickey
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Jun 21, 2004, 05:12 PM
 
Yep, that's the same thing here at times...good 'ole Step #5! I've let it sit for an hour before and it actually went on to replace/optimize the drive; however, any longer than that I would personally give up (especially if the drive is smaller than 30GB)...
     
AKcrab
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Jun 21, 2004, 05:15 PM
 
If you can let it go overnight, why not?
     
kennedy  (op)
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Jun 21, 2004, 05:49 PM
 
Originally posted by AKcrab:
If you can let it go overnight, why not?
Well, because my whole business is sitting with no computers today... its my company server... and if I can't recover it that way, I need to find some other way to get it live... if that means staying up all night trying to reconstruct it from scratch somehow.
     
AKcrab
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Jun 21, 2004, 06:00 PM
 
Ah, I see. That's a pretty good "why not".
     
kennedy  (op)
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Jun 21, 2004, 11:08 PM
 
Okay, it sat in step 5 for more than 3 hours... but less than 6 hours...

Its now been 7 hours total... its been in step 9 for 1 hour...
Recording any file or folder differences; 1,205,372 tests...
Oh, now its at 1,265,081 tests...

Is it counting up to a particular number of completed tests?
Or is it the number of file nodes or some such?
     
badidea
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Jun 22, 2004, 07:08 AM
 
Originally posted by kennedy:
...
Or is it the number of file nodes or some such?
Yep!
***
     
Kate
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Jun 22, 2004, 07:22 AM
 
In cases of complex and severe damage DW actually can work more than a day to process and check a drive. It depends on the extent of damage and on the number of affected files, nodes, and data snippets on that drive.
Given that the system has thousands of files it depends on a check in that area needs a lot of work. Let it work.
     
iNeusch
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Jun 22, 2004, 08:36 AM
 
Should DW be used on a monthly basis ? Just in case ?
     
typoon
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Jun 22, 2004, 08:57 AM
 
Originally posted by iNeusch:
Should DW be used on a monthly basis ? Just in case ?
Yes or More. My general rule of thumb is a minimum of once a month. Unless I'm doing a lot of intensive work then I run it twice a month.
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kennedy  (op)
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Jun 22, 2004, 09:22 AM
 
Okay, DW experts... a few questions for you...

DW did come through last night and has successfully built an optimized disk for me.

But given its indicating some disk malfunction, should I hit the "replace" button, let DW do its thing, and then copy the result to a new disk drive?

Or would it be wiser to use some other tools to copy the data off as best I can to a new disk? (Wouldn't want DW's attempt to write its replacement to cause loss of data due to the drive malfunction.)

Or is there a way to tell DW to write its replacement to a fresh disk??
     
chris v
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Jun 22, 2004, 09:49 AM
 
Compare the directories before you overwrite.

EDIT: Then, if it's a good directory, and all your stuff is there, replace the directory, then immediately replace the drive. Sounds like it's not worth it for you to risk running off of that drive for any longer than it takes you to get it cloned/replaced.

(FWIW, Carbon Copy Cloner can automatically copy bootable systems from one disk to the next. I have mine set to back up data files every Sunday night and my system once a month.) Due to the inherent risks of physical drive failure, I've always advocated having complete mirrors. Maybe you could consider setting up a RAID mirror?

CV
( Last edited by chris v; Jun 22, 2004 at 09:56 AM. )

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dtriska
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Jun 22, 2004, 02:53 PM
 
I had a dozen overlapped extent allocations on my drive once. DiskWarrior ran for about 36 hours or so, but it fixed the drive. 3 hours is nothing.
     
yukon
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Jun 22, 2004, 04:01 PM
 
kennedy, stick to posting one topic on the same subject.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=217449
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warnergt
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Jun 23, 2004, 01:34 PM
 
I've seen DiskWarrior take 5-7 hours but only
on computers where I never ran it before.
Subsequent optimizations usually took 0.5 to 1 hour.
     
neilw
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Jun 23, 2004, 05:27 PM
 
I had this problem once, spoke to Alsoft and they recommended letting it run overnight. Did indeed eventually finish. I complained about the lack of useful progress reporting, and they said that was a known issue, and something they're going to try to improve in future versions. Don't know schedule for that, though.

It's really the only major knock on the product I can think of. Can be frustrating (!) waiting for hours not knowing if it's crashed or just slogging through the drive, and when it'll finish.

This has served as a good reminder to me that it's time to go do a preventative DiskWarrior run on my hard drive...
     
Buck_W
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Jun 23, 2004, 10:05 PM
 
Originally posted by neilw:
This has served as a good reminder to me that it's time to go do a preventative DiskWarrior run on my hard drive...
By "preventative DiskWarrior run", do you guys boot from the DiskWarrior CD and run it just to perform regular maintenance on your HD? I have DiskWarrior but I have never run it because I have never had a problem. Is a good idea to run it periodically?
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CharlesS
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Jun 24, 2004, 03:04 AM
 
Frankly, if the SMART test is indicating that the drive is going to fail, I don't think letting DiskWarrior fix the directory will help. That drive is doomed - it is going to fail, and no utility software can save it. Fixing the drive isn't your concern - your concern is getting everything off of it and onto another drive, pronto, before it conks out completely.

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chris v
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Jun 24, 2004, 09:20 AM
 
Originally posted by Buck_W:
By "preventative DiskWarrior run", do you guys boot from the DiskWarrior CD and run it just to perform regular maintenance on your HD? I have DiskWarrior but I have never run it because I have never had a problem. Is a good idea to run it periodically?
I've had it catch errors before any had become apparent. It's kept all my machines (5, now) healthy for the last three years. The only nuke-and-pave I've ever had to perform was due to operator stupidity. (And I had a nice, fresh 2-day-old backup on my mirror drive to perform it with.)

CV

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typoon
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Jun 24, 2004, 09:24 AM
 
Originally posted by Buck_W:
By "preventative DiskWarrior run", do you guys boot from the DiskWarrior CD and run it just to perform regular maintenance on your HD? I have DiskWarrior but I have never run it because I have never had a problem. Is a good idea to run it periodically?
It depends. I either boot from the CD or I put the machine I'm going to rund DW on into target mode and run DW from the other machine.
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diskgolfking
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Jun 24, 2004, 09:38 AM
 
At least you can run diskwarrior. I burned a new 3.02 CD but it still won't boot on my Rev C 12" PB. It just gets stuck at the Apple logo
     
typoon
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Jun 24, 2004, 09:46 AM
 
Originally posted by diskgolfking:
At least you can run diskwarrior. I burned a new 3.02 CD but it still won't boot on my Rev C 12" PB. It just gets stuck at the Apple logo
Sorry to hear that. Try using BootCD to Make a DiskWarrior Bootable disk.
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diskgolfking
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Jun 24, 2004, 10:55 AM
 
Originally posted by typoon:
Sorry to hear that. Try using BootCD to Make a DiskWarrior Bootable disk.
Thanks, I'll try that.
     
Miniryu
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Nov 2, 2005, 12:20 PM
 
I've been on step 5 now for 10 hours, and hitting the 'cancel' button doesn't stop the process. My G5 is over a year and a half old and this is the first time I've DWed it, so I expect it will take some time, but 10 hours for just step 5? There is a message saying speed has been disabled because of lack of memory, maybe this has something to do with it.
Also, I'm using a copy burned with BootCD and I have heard that will make it slower. But I'm scared I can't cancel out of it.

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Hal Itosis
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Nov 2, 2005, 07:47 PM
 
a r r g h (double post)
-HI-
     
Hal Itosis
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Nov 2, 2005, 07:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by kennedy
> But given its indicating some disk malfunction [ . . . ]
Whenever DW languishes on step 5, occasionally displaying a note to the effect :
"speed inhibited by disk malfunction" -- chances are the HD has bad blocks.

Depending on the severity, the situation could range from painful to impossible.
Use TechTool to see how many can be mapped out, but be prepared to install a
new HD at any time. Note: SMART Status doesn't always see bad blocks, and this
can happen to "new" Macs as well as old. (That's been my experience anyway).
-HI-
     
yukon
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Nov 3, 2005, 01:48 AM
 
Basically, back up everything you have, and reformat, turn on Zero All Data.

Micromat says to do that. I don't know though, I thought IDE drives would automatically map out bad blocks....reformatting seems to help though.
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CharlesS
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Nov 3, 2005, 05:02 AM
 
Zeroing your drive will return it to working order. However, if the drive is about to fail, more bad blocks could show up in the future. If you ever see any bad blocks again after zeroing, you need to replace the drive immediately as it is dying.

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Nov 3, 2005, 12:48 PM
 
Use techtool pro.
     
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Nov 3, 2005, 02:20 PM
 
Had a client's disk where DW ran overnight, then said it couldn't rebuild the directory. I managed to get most off the files off the disk using DataRescue and replaced the disk.
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